Eden Lake [REVIEW]

They started it! – Jenny

I love that feeling when you watch a movie based solely on a few facts about it and it blows your mind. All I knew about Eden Lake was that it has been favorably compared to Straw Dogs and Lord of the Flies and that it stars Michael Fassbender. I didn’t love Straw Dogs but I sure do love me some Fassbender so I said why not!

When a young couple Jenny who teaches kids and her hunky boyfriend Steve head to idyllic Lake Eden for a get away things don’t go as planned. What was intended as a romantic proposal destination becomes a site of blood and terror when a group of local kids terrorize the couple.

Many reviewers apparently felt this film painted an unfair portrait of working class Brits as violent and near bestial people. I’d argue that it is less of an indictment of the working class and more on the society that leaves an entire class of people with limited opportunities, under paid, over worked and forced to leave their children to their own devices. It also speaks to the way in which disenfranchised men will cling to whatever power is available to them. Denied any of the standard bastions of power these young men turn to machismo and posturing which so often escalates to violence in real life.

This is a movie which fits along with brutal British horror master pieces like The Descent and extreme French fare like Frontier(s). Definitely one of the best horror flicks I have seen in recent memory.